


Marriage Blanc

by DHume



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-12-16
Updated: 2011-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-27 10:35:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/294866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DHume/pseuds/DHume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John always was the only one who could lie to Sherlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [quodthey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quodthey/gifts).



The day John finds out Sherlock is gay, he is standing beside a body on the floor; which all things considered is pretty normal. 

Blood congeals in a shiny red slick, the body’s blonde quiff stirs in the icy London wind, and Sherlock is whirling around like a mad thing, as per usual. 

“John, look in his right hand pocket.”

John can barely get a query out before Sherlock adds, “In his trousers, John, do try not to be an idiot. There will be a club wristband in there and - yeeeees, that’s it.”

John holds the item up in his fingers, nodding uncertainly at him. It’s pink and it’s bright and made of that plasticy fabric, warped with vertical stretchmarks where the body — the man, John reminds himself, who was once _very_ much alive — slipped it off his thin wrists.

“Even for you, Sherlock, I think this man’s clubbing patterns are a bit of a stretch to hinge a murder case on. Thousands of people pass through the average one in a night and- “

Sherlock holds up a finger, unfocussed through John’s camera-lens-like closeup view of the crudely stamped black ink adorning the bracelet. John still sees him do it though, and he shuts up.

“It was not just any club, John. Even for someone like you, _surely_ the name’s a dead giveaway. ‘The Handkerchief’? Obviously a bit of wordplay intended to be funny. Themed names are ever so tawdry.” He wrinkles his nose, and seeing John’s puzzled look (There are hundreds of different varieties to these but it seems Sherlock has learnt them _all_ ) continues. “It’s a gay club, John. I admit it’s rather more relevant to me, but surely a sad day has come when I am more versed in the popular culture of the masses than you are.” He jerks his head toward the heavens and thumps an arm toward his chest, clearly meant to be a mock swoon. “Whatever will we do with you. I’m suddenly struck by a fear of the impending apocalypse.” 

Out of all of his looks of surprise, John is sure that this one has to be the superlative expression. He’s half way through a nod when his brain catches up with his neck and the result is rather painful. John swears he can hear crunching. 

“Sorry, could you rewind that a bit, Sherlock? You’re doing a case on gay culture?”

The look shot back at him is a shard of bluest ice. 

“No, _of course not_. I am myself a gay man, hence… Relevance.” He makes little gestures in the air, reminiscent of the skulling stroke one practices in pools and ponds in the summers of childhood.  “Which brings us away from such tedious matters and back towards the case. I know that this particular establishment likes to lend itself to older, more exclusive clientele, and due to the unavoidable fact that gay clubs are a niche market due to population, plus the fierce turf wars and customer loyalty… I guarantee that any suspicious activity will have been noticed, and that if we journey there tonight, answers will be ours.”


	2. Chapter 2

“He’s high, you know.” 

Donovan’s clipped voice cuts straight through the cold air to John’s frozen brain, which has nothing to do with the minus ten weather forecasts and everything to do with the man suddenly visible in the distance, a flapping black crow amongst grey pigeons. 

“I know.”

“Oh, so it just doesn’t bother you?” John can tell that every time he speaks to Sally, her respect for him decreases, almost in increments. Why are you still here, she seems to silently say. Why aren’t you away with normal people. Are you even normal at all, or are you just like _him_?

Today there is something different, something John would never name out loud as protectiveness, but pretty close all the same. Sally’s wordless distaste now extends to him, to the unofficial caretaker of the madman in black, who may be broken but surely does not need betrayal, even though he deals out the same thing often enough. John can read it all in her eyes. He wonders if Sherlock’s mad magical logic has finally rubbed off on him.

“I can’t stop him. The coke… Christ, you’re a police officer, but I know you and Lestrade know. It’s a choice between nannying him twenty-four seven, which on top of being _impossible_ doesn’t pay the rent, and…. This.”

A little bit of sympathy fights for space around the wrinkled nose of disbelief and narrowed eyes of disapproval on her face. It wins, but only grudgingly.

“Would a drugs bust-“

“No, and nor would rehab. I’ve even had to contact his brother.”

“What, the creepy one who hung around those crimes scenes where you caused two poor blokes to be shot?”

“Moriarty wasn’t really a ‘poor bloke’, Sally. Especially if the going rate for bespoke Westwood suits is as extortionate as the smug git’s face said it was.” 

A little bit of viciousness there, and that startles him. John doesn’t like this side of himself, the side that comes out to play when his leg is hurting and people like Mike and Mrs. Hudson try to pity him, but living with Sherlock has made it better. This is a shock. 

“His brother has… Tried. He made some suggestions to me.”

“Your grim look’s all the information I want on what he said, John. Don’t-“ Sally’s face has opened up, all the emotions of guilty and pity — John _hates_ pity, he hates it — and an awful sadness there for all to see. But she shuts herself up at the last second, and she sighs. “It’s too late to give you a get out clause, isn’t it? You two are connected for better or worse, I guess.” She laughs, a little sighing chuckle that is a world away from the wide mouthed, eye lifting thing John has seen on occasion; usually prompted by a soaking in the Thames after a chase or a hauling in by the Other Police. “Now I know why you look so shit today, at least. Did you get _any_ sleep?”

“Thanks, and no. He played the violin at double speed - perfect tempo, apparently, just sped up like a record. Then he made the, the lines of coke into some sort of insanely complicated zen garden pattern and crouched on his heels for a solid hour ‘contemplating their beauty’.”

The wincing shock seems polite — this is, after all, the woman who accused Sherlock capable of murder after having known John for all of thirty seconds — and feigned, but John takes it as the excuse he needs, and uses it as an out to leave. 


	3. Chapter 3

He catches Sherlock by the arm, and even with his abnormal reaction times it is like holding onto a scared and stupid bird, flapping uselessly.

 “Sherlock.”

“John. You look disgusted and shocked. I wouldn’t have thought someone like you would have such an adverse reaction to something so obvious.” Lestrade is looking at the two of them curiously, like someone observing animals in a zoo or an interesting yet tragic domestic spat. “In fact I can’t believe I didn’t tell you sooner. You _said_ it was all _fine_ -“

John pins down his other arm. “Sherlock, this has nothing to do with that. I look like this because-“ he drops his voice, like the nanny scolding a child he knows he is -“Because you’re high off your fucking head and we’re in the middle of a police investigation. With police officers. God, Sherlock, do you realise how stupid you can be sometimes? You’re lucky those people you treat like tools haven’t lost their jobs yet or locked you up yet, much good it would do you.”

“Oh.” Sherlock’s voice slides down a few tones, back from the womanish high urgency that was John’s only clue to his mania and back down a few tones to his low rumble. “I see.”

“Oi , are you two all right?” Lestrade seems to have had enough of being the awkward onlooker, and has edged closer. “You two seemed a bit angry.” I seem angry, and Sherlock seems mad as a hatter, John silently corrects him. “We’re fine, Greg. Sherlock just suggested  a very odd place to look for more clues.” That prompts a quirk of the mouth. “Clues? I can’t help but imagine you two as members of the Scooby Doo gang, now. Not sure whether you’d be Velma or Fred, Sherlock.” 

Sherlock looks blankly at both of the smaller men, both now smiling despite themselves. “I haven’t the faintest clue what you’re about so I’m going to assume it’s some pointless childhood reminisce or something equally idiotic.” He whirls right, starting toward the nearby footpath. ”Come along John, we’re off to the Handkerchief.”

“The what? I’ve told you a thousand times-“ 

“Hyperbole’s for gormless teenagers, Lestrade-“

“Sherlock, you can’t just keep going off on your own!”

The threat of a drugs bust hangs in the air unsaid, and that shames John profoundly. He’s never been a man for drugs — a puff of weed at uni was as far as he’d ever ventured — and until meeting Sherlock he’d been a man of laws and rules.

That was a lie, though. Until the army, then. The very army he’d joined because of his love for his Country and its ruler, the one that had taught him to cross the street safely and not talk to strangers and not, ever, associate with the kind of person who knew criminals by first name and took Class A substances and whose family had the blood of innocents on their hands. 

But this paradox can be laid to rest for another day. For now, John is stuck with a burning of his ears and a sickness in his stomach because he knows that the police know about Sherlock’s problem. And that they won’t do anything about it doesn’t surprise or even anger John. They need Sherlock, and right now Sherlock needs something so powerful it can melt bones and burn through skin and there’s nothing John can do about it. 

Or at least, nothing John thinks he can.


	4. Chapter 4

John’s silent in the taxi.

 He acts like the substitute for a human skull he is ostensibly meant to be, and is as quiet as the dead from the moment they leave the crime scene until they’re halfway to Baker Street, twenty minutes into the journey. Next to him Sherlock stares holes into the back of the cabbie’s head and stays almost perfectly still, save the left hand on his left knee that oscillates his fingers just so, like a random uncurling and curling of fingers, all pistons. John recognises it as Sherlock’s nervous tic; moving through violin notes with a phantom instrument. Of all his time living with Sherlock he has only seen it happen after;

Sherlock exceeds four nicotine patches, 

Sherlock visits his mother,

Sherlock is off his head.

It’s been happening more and more, recently, and he fancies he can recognise the hand movements from the frantic dancing ones he saw Sherlock use early that morning. This really can’t go on.

After that, John makes sure not to keep a note of what Sherlock is doing, or how he is fidgeting or even what he looks like he is thinking about. He’s half scared he’ll turn his head and see Sherlock lighting up a cigarette, or rolling up a fiver to use to snort cocaine instead of paying the cabbie with it, but even if these things happen John is too busy trying to clear the sullen grey cloud cover by force of will alone.

When he does turn back to face Sherlock (his fears were totally unfounded, of course they were, but John can blame this on the night of no sleep) in order to pay the cabbie, his hands seem to have stopped shaking. Pushing past him in order to not step out on to the road, John is glad his leg hasn’t bothered him since he first moved in all that time ago, as the cab’s footwell and the rain sodden gutter are both a good distance from each other and not the kind of thing he wants a seized-up leg crumpling into.

Sherlock folds himself out of the cab after him and brushes past, his long coat gently slapping at his legs as Sherlock raps on 221b’s door. 

“Sherlock, I do have a key.”

“Do you? I don’t. Pity, Mrs. Hudson’s already coming toward the door.”

John will never get used to Sherlock’s casual disregard of others, he really won’t. As Mrs. Hudson opens the door, her smile strained and her face a little paler than usual John is reminded once more of the night he had spent listening to hyperactive scrapings on the violin, haunting melodies that instead  jarred at the ears. Mrs. Hudson must have been kept up by them, too. 

“Hello, you two. My, Sherlock, you don’t look very well.” 

“I’m fine, Mrs. Hudson.” He impulsively hugs her little frame, and her arms stick out at angles, betraying her shock. John isn’t sure whether it’s a nonverbal apology, or whether Sherlock had decided to hug her for the hell of it- either way, it’s startling. After a long moment, he releases her, and they step into the building.

“Mrs. Hudson, John and I won’t be staying long; we’re going out later.”

“Well that doesn’t bother me, I’m _not your housekeeper_. Where are you going?”

“Clubbing. Which reminds me, I need to talk to your friend, Mrs. Turner.”

“Why ever for, dear?” 

Sherlock looks down at her with a predatory smile on his face, although John has a nasty feeling that she’s not his intended prey.

“I need to talk to her married lodgers.”

Standing to the side of the older lady and the black crow, watching this exchange like a tennis volley, John can feel the tiredness worming its way through his brain. It takes him a moment to realise who Sherlock is talking about;  Mrs. Turner and her - 

Her gay married lodgers.

Oh.

“Sherlock, why do we need to speak to our neighbourhood husbands?”

“To get some proper attire for you.”

And snap snap snap, so the little fish was eaten up by the shark. Sherlock is a bastard and if John had had four or five more hours sleep, he would hit him right here and now, Mrs. Hudson and her “little domestics” be damned.

 But instead he stands there dumbly and watches Mrs. Hudson’s little face light up past its slight grey sheen, and hardly resists at all when Sherlock bundles him up in his coat once more and they visit the often-talked about Mrs. Turner, when he is presented with a mug of hot tea and twittered over by not one, but two elderly ladies, talking about Sherlock’s work, and Sherlock’s ‘illness’ (really, he admires the euphemisms people in London come up with, it’s like calling a mugging an ‘accident) and Sherlock’s Handsome War Hero Friend, Mr. Watson. 

Of course, the man himself has disappeared up the mirror of their own narrow staircase, talking with one of Mrs. Turner’s lodgers. To be honest John wouldn’t follow him up there even if he could, under the heavy iron weight of twee chatter and plates of biscuits. He doesn’t want to see Sherlock insult yet another set of civilians in his quest to get what he wants, and he certainly doesn’t want to see what Sherlock wants him to dress up in so that he can blend in at somewhere with the frankly _ridiculous_ name of The Handkerchief.

As he sits at the little rounded wooden table between two women only marginally smaller than he is and his knees knock against his chair legs and the table legs, John keeps an ear out for the sound of raised voices, or shouting, or a clattering as Sherlock makes some hasty exit or other. 

It’s the most restful time he’s had in a good while, really; he’s warm, full, and sitting down, missing one mad flatmate, and he almost doesn’t hear it when Mrs. Turner addresses a question to him, even though John could have sworn he hadn’t closed his eyes, only blinked.

“Sorry, Mrs. Turner, I didn’t hear you. What was that?”

He shakes his head as if to clear it, and offers the little brunette a smile. She rolls her eyes, a little, and sets her tea down.

“I was asking if you two had sorted it all out yet, dear. Marie was just telling me about Sherlock being ill, and I was wondering if you’d come to… An agreement, that’s all, dear. Maybe about him stopping from making himself so ill all the time.”

“Oh, my husband and I used to be the same,” Mrs. Hudson chimes in, smiling brightly again. “When Sherlock had him behind bars, I made him promise to be good for the jury in return for a stylish burial, I know how it is.”

Suddenly John doesn’t feel so calm, any more. It’s suddenly hit him - really hit him, not just an idle observation in times of quiet or when people are being really annoying - that people really think he and Sherlock or a couple, or at least that _something’s_ there. 

For fuck’s sake, he was going to a gay club tonight! For a case, but still. His brother believed that they were together! The brother that had been able to deduce where he’d been sleeping in a room, even better and faster than Sherlock had.

And today’s little fact about Sherlock’s life made things… Different.

God, what if they _were_ right. Maybe the fifth kidnapping his brother had orchestrated would be useful after all - Viola would smile at that (He thought that she was the same woman who had called herself Anthea all those months ago, but now her hair was red and her name was different. John supposed he would never know), he thought - one thing that Mycroft would feel justified in putting his in all probability ludicrously fat expense budget on, limousines and CCTV hire dedicated to finding his baby brother a partner.

John could remember where he had been taken, in fact - it wasn’t a warehouse, this time, but an abandoned-looking alcove below a large overpass. Someone had, absurdly, set a little tablecloth on top of a beached shopping trolley to make a table on which Mycroft had presented John with a bag full of leaflets to Harley Street rehab clinics and packs upon packs of round white nicotine patches. 

He’d even - oh hell, he’d even come _out_ with it and told John that he expected John to use his “domestic influence” to solve Sherlock’s “recurring problem”, which he knew “brotherly love” was no match for.

John resists the urge to scrub his eyes like a tired child right there at Mrs. Turner’s round table, but only barely, only after he realises that it would probably inspire at least 2 more teapot-fulls of tea _each_ and a round of bemused questioning.

He was in a relationship with a man, and he didn’t know it. Or at least, everyone thought he was, and that was the same thing. Needed to be the same thing, because right now Sherlock needed someone. Not just someone to fuss over him, to provide a link to the outside world, Genius-to-Plebian FM; he needed someone to sort him out, and it wasn’t going to be anyone other than John.

But at the same time, John wasn’t sure how the bloody hell he was going to keep any semblance of ‘plausible deniability’ in the process, to himself or the great detective currently winging around upstairs. 

And, far more than any snickering waitresses or disapproving old men at the surgery could this _worries_ John. Because lying to yourself is a dangerous path, even if it only starts at lying to those around you, or acting a part. And this is what this would have to be - a part. And John doesn’t like it.

As he decides for the sake of his sanity to stop being introspective and get on with the case they’d been assigned he hears the ceiling shake, and the three of them look up in unison.

It’s after a hesitant call of “Sherlock?” to the light fixture that goes unanswered John starts to worry, and a look at the two womens’ faces reveals a mixture of amusement, exasperation and worry, though heavy on the latter. John gets up from the miniscule table and legs it up the stairs as fast as his shortish legs will carry him, and is met with a small pile of clothing with legs.

“Hello! You must be John.”

A head pokes itself out from behind the clothing, and John recognises the dark-skinned, smiling man from one of the photographs downstairs. He matches the expression, since the man doesn’t seem to have reacted to the noise.

“I would offer to shake your hand, but I’m a little occupied, sorry. He’s in the room through there, don’t worry.” The man jerks his head back a little, indicating a door directly behind him, and with that disappears into another door to John’s left.

He hadn’t even caught his name.

John steps forward cautiously - after all, it could be possible that the man he’d assumed was one of “Mrs. Turner’s married ones” was deaf and that was the reason why he hadn’t heard Sherlock trying to blow everyone up or cause massive structural damage by starting a silk cloth fire, or something, he thinks. When he pushes through the door, he is met with the sight of Sherlock looking for all the world like he is dancing with a shirt. 

“I don’t even need to ask what you’re doing, do I.”

Sherlock jerks his head up to meet his gaze, and John’s relieved to see that the fever-bright colour in the light irises is gone, hopefully signalling the return of the Calm, Non-Manic Detective. He then visibly looks John up and down for some reason lingering at his arms, eyes tracing the length of them before carelessly throwing the garment over his shoulder toward John. 

“Try that on, and go downstairs. I’m not finished yet.”

“Only if you tell me what that noise was.”

“I was jumping. Don’t ask questions. _Now go downstairs._ ”

As he clutches the shirt, John feels all too happy to oblige and takes the stairs two at a time, ready to down four cups of tea straight or watch a whole hour of Connie Prince’s reruns - anything - rather than let himself reflect on what he just saw and what it means for tonight.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I rewrote the last chapter - Chapter Four - to add just over another 1000 words to it and now I'm just posting the first snippets of Chapter Five. But don't worry, I'm going to be editing as I go along! I'm terribly sorry for the inconvenience, but 'writing chapters then posting whilst done' means I never post things unless I have a momentum going, which I don't currently.

“Sherlock, I still don’t understand why we had to attend this club’s singles night. Instead of, you know, going in like normal private investigators.”

“Consulting Detective plus blogger.”

“Yes, thank you for the correction. I don’t really care at the moment, especially since I am wearing _spray on denim_ and a completely ridiculous shirt.”

 

Sherlock sighs in the back of the taxi, and his hand twitches as if it’s just itching to frame his intelligent forehead and massage his temples in a show of exasperation. It’s something out of place, since John’s usually the one throwing fits about Sherlock’s unwillingness to cooperate in social situations.

“Skinny jeans, as the store clerk so eloquently called them, are not spray on but merely a tighter fit than what an underweight army veteran is used to wearing. And that shirt is not ridiculous. It’s a design classic.”

“You’d know.”

“What was that, John?”

Sherlock’s biting retort is cut off when the taxi is flooded with a pink light as it pulls up beside the club’s entrance, the neon sign’s glow from above the door penetrating the rain-speckled windows and thrown back threefold from the wet tarmac in reflection, the dim streetlights on either side of the building intensifying the effect. It all serves all the better to highlight what kind of patrons are currently entering the club; briefcase wankers, as Murray used to call them, but de-aged and slimmer and suaver, the opposite of everything John will ever be.

John feels the headache coming on even before the stomach-vibrating tones of the bass reaches his ears.

His legs itch at the new trouser’s seams, but they’re so tight John doesn’t think he can itch them. He settles for bending his leg and creasing the stiff, tight fabric so that the folds dig into his leg instead, as he gets up off the leather seat and hops out the cab whilst Sherlock passes a crisp twenty. They’d had a private client last week who had paid in cash, and ever since John has felt like a rich drug dealer, from handing Mrs. Hudson that month’s rent (which was really more like two months’, really, since he had decided to pay for the damage Sherlock had inflicted by throwing crockery at the ceiling only last week and Mrs. Hudson had pitched a fit) to feeding in note after note to the local self checkout machine when buying non-perishable food and two bursting plastic bag’s worths of milk. 

 

Sherlock’s right behind him of course, in another one of his tight, darkly iridescent shirts and even darker colourless trousers serving only to make John feel even more out of place.

(Which is true in more than appearance, a sour voice in his head snarks before he has the chance for mental self reproach. Why are they even _here_?)

For once, Sherlock doesn’t use his mixture bluster and disarming smoothness appropriate for a confidence trickster to get them inside the door flanked by bouncers, instead stepping toward the back of the mercifully short, uncrowded line waiting for entry.  John wonders if they’ll have bright bands slapped on their wrists like that on the body’s; a child’s friendship bracelet, or manacles. But they pass through the wide swinging doors without incident; they’re obviously not choosing to attend during one of the wilder events, and are going in on one of the quieter nights.

Small consolation.

The little ante room where the cloakroom seems to be held is made a little cramped by a group of young men heading in the opposite direction, lighters and packets of tobacco bulging from pockets of trousers improbably even tighter than John’s own and hanging from fingers. He catches Sherlock’s gaze lingering longer than strictly necessary even for a brace of deductions, and wonders whether it’s the smoking paraphernalia or the people. He concludes the latter. 

 

They pass through a second set of swinging doors. The whole place has the distinct feel of a fancier class of doctor’s, or a retro filming studio, sleek and block coloured but at the same time _grimy_ rather than sterile squeaky clean. The main room is pretty dim, and a little split level part separating the bar, seating area and stage-like bit gives it another time-warp feeling. 

If it was possible for John to feel more out of place, he’s feeling it now. This is more than just unfamiliar or taboo territory; this is for _civilians_ , and after all these months John still has a glass barrier separating _us_ and _them_ like some sick little version of Timmy the Orphan, except with a gun and a limp rather than consumption and a broken leg, his nose pressed to the metaphorical window of alien social situation after social situation. 

 

When he was younger he didn’t really come to places like this that put on airs: he was a uni student, and then an intern; it was either dives or playing at being middle aged in innocent venues like restaurants or over at mate’s houses. He was helping to fight a war continents away whilst people like his sister and the other modern yuppies started to go places like this, and he if he;s honest with himself it was more than the stationing in Afghanistan than make him feel like an impostor right now.

He needs a drink, and fast.

“Sherlock, I’m going to the bar, I need a drink.” He doesn’t offer to get Sherlock one, because he is still the man’s doctor even if he hasn’t found a way to stop him taking fucking Class A substances yet, and he knows that whatever drinks they serve here will make a pretty mess with whatever Sherlock’s got running round his system at the moment.

Nor does Sherlock as for one. John wonders if it’s for the same reasons.

“Good, good. I’ll come with you. You’ll be needing to fit in as well as possible; you’re doing all right, but I wouldn’t advise striking out right now.” 

He falls easily into step with John as he crosses the large room toward the hi-tech looking bar, despite the fact a stride of his is almost twice the length of one of John’s. They easily find two stools at the right of the bar with at least three unoccupied ones to each side, and slide onto them. It’s early, and most of the patrons are either down half a level by tables and proper chairs, or else entering and exiting the ante room, either making their entrance or leaving for a cigarette break. John orders a beer, and gets it in a foreign-looking brown bottle, a testament to the under the surface ostentatiousness the whole place seems to have. Is that a hyperbole? John isn’t sure, but he knows that anywhere that tries to look minimalistic but serves only foreign, micro brewed beer has got at least _something_ to prove. 

 

He takes a sip of the stuff - which turns out to be surprisingly nice -  and turns to Sherlock, who is drumming his fingers onto the beetle black bar counter, watching intently as the barman moves away to serve a man the other side of the room, to the far left. John glances back at the man; he looks like a dejected shrivelled husk, his arms concertinaed in on themselves and slumped bonelessly on the counter. He raises his head with visible effort and orders what seems to be a complicated and strong drink; the barman busies himself with preparing it and as soon as he siphons the first ingredient into an empty glass it starts to smoke. John starts, surprised, and looks back at his flatmate again.

“Yeah, about that - Sherlock, why are we here undercover?” he almost whispers in a hushed voice. “This isn’t you not bothering to involve the proper channels - you took me to visit Mrs. Hudson’s bosom buddy and her tenants, and they lent me clothes. You even used our drug cash to buy me jeans I will never wear after today, because for your information my legs currently have no circulation and might possibly not work ever again. Why are you so insistent we act like normal patrons?”

Sherlock smiles, a pulling of muscles that shouldn’t look that fascinating and odd, not on a face that’s merely human. “I thought you’d made the parallels between the way we were paid for that case and conventional drug barons, yes. You react strangely every time we make a large purchase and don’t use cards. I thought it was either that you find it funny or that it is unpleasant to you, possibly because you seem to be making it your business to make yourself informed on my cocaine habit as of late.”

“Sherlock, keep your voice down, we’re in public,“ John hisses out the side of his mouth at him. Sherlock cuts him off from carrying on with a Look.

 “First of all, look around and observe, for once. Do you really think that anyone who could hear us in the first place would be the types to judge? No, no, look at that couple nearly out of earshot - you can tell they’ve just come from a party rife with drug taking and alcohol abuse by their fingernails alone as well as a dozen other signs even you couldn’t miss, not to mention the barman. I shouldn’t like to think whether he’ll lose his gainful employment when the proprietor finds out what he’s being doing with the till profits. Do you think I should inform him? Might be useful, having him owe me a favour.”

It takes John a lot of effort to keep from hitting him, it really does. To distract his hands with a mind of their own John downs the rest of his drink, welcoming the burn in his throat and the numbness that follows it. 

“Sherlock, that wouldn’t be fair. For a start, it would very probably get the barman in a lot of trouble, and -“

 

“But John,” Sherlock purrs in a low voice, looking at him, “I thought you were all hung up on the concept of justice for the sake of it.”

Defying all laws of physics and gravity, the man is _looking up at him_. Looking up at him! John simply has no idea how someone close to a foot taller can manage it, but Sherlock does. John doesn’t grace the stupid attention-grabbing tactic with even a bat of an eyelid, though he can probably tell John noticed all the same. John swallows.

“Yeah, and regardless, it would probably make the barman mad at us. And since you are so obsessed with us coming here and making an effort and not making a scene, I would quite like to have a nice time! One where I get pleasantly drunk and we possibly have take away later than isn’t from some tucked away place down the road serving unfashionably ethnic food, courtesy of yet another person who _owes you a favour_.”

John swears he can see a half-pout form on Sherlock’s lips in the harsh glow from the bar that gives his face the look of one carved straight from solid shadow, but after the tiniest slice of a second Sherlock’s constant low-level fidgeting moves his face again and the  - illusion? Real expression? - is gone.

“I thought you liked those places.”

Has the man regressed to a child? The capable, calculating man who can manipulate anyone into doing anything for him for instead of lifting a finger isn’t someone who makes _effort_ , who is full of _sentiment_. Drugs must be messing with his head. 

“The places are fine, Sherlock. The food is always delicious and I appreciate you not arguing me into cooking rubbish, like the unhealthy bachelors we are. But tonight I want normality.”

John’s earned it a million times over in this week alone, he thinks to himself, and there’s a satisfied mental -aha- when he sees Sherlock’s expression shift into something half grudging, but almost unreadable.

“Well then, if that’s you attitude.” He raises his voice a little, the pitch and volume going along with the gesture he suddenly makes, a mimic of the ones he uses to hail cabs. “I’ll have the same again for my - for John here, and I’ll have an water. With ice.” His voice drops again until it’s at its normal tone, the one that’s meant for John’s ears only. “You haven’t anything for sore throats, have you? I feel like I’ve inhaled capsaicin.”

He looks off into the middle distance, thinking. “Come to think of it, I probably have. I was doing some experiments earlier.” He visibly shakes himself, and John wonders if there actually was some sort of experiment to synthesise pepper spray from household items or whether he genuinely doesn’t think John knows the symptoms of drug usage. He’s not sure.

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

It’s a lot later on in the evening.

John can tell, because by now his vision and balance have started to go. He can think all right, so therefore he knows that one doesn’t start out without basic motor skills, one loses them. So it must be later in the evening. Right.

By this point, John and Sherlock have moved from the bar to the slightly raised, comfier-looking sofas and chairs surrounding the dance floor. John knows that it must be a great deal hotter than it was before, because his shirt has become slightly more unbuttoned and he’s not the slightest bit cold.

Sherlock’s has too.

Speaking of which, the man looks like he’s glowing. His eyes are big and wide and shockingly pale and roving around the room, drinking every detail in like a plant in a draught and - John’s sure that this train of thought was going somewhere.

He leans back and is careful not to thump against the headrest of the sofa too obviously, closing his eyes and taking deep breaths. It’s simply not fair that his eyesight has gone a little odd, because he’s getting better at deductions and he wanted to find out if he could see what Sherlock could see. He wanted to join in with Sherlock’s lonely game of watching and observing and understanding. It’s all terribly unfair.

As for Sherlock man himself - his existence isn’t just unfair on his own being, it’s unfair on everyone elses’ too. His difference makes it hard on everyone, and John thinks that though it isn’t wrong, it’s inconvenient, which is never good, being non-judgemental about it. And the drugs are never good in any stretch of the imagination; illegal ones, anyway. Even though alcohol has robbed John of his excellent eyesight for the time being, he can’t blame it for too much.  What was it that Mycroft had suggested to John? Ah, John remembers it now. He had suggested, to put it ever so bluntly, that John be Sherlock’s fuckbuddy. Or, no, the little sober part of his brain admonishes, Mycroft hadn’t said that. Of course, it would be far too distasteful for a minor member of the british government to ever utter either the words “fuck” in the actual sense of sex or “buddy” ever at all; John imagines Mycroft uses old-style slang for both insults and vocatives, anyway.

 

He’d forgotten how much his inner monologue ran away with him when he was drunk.

God, he needed it to shut up, and fast. But the only solution to that was either distraction, sobering up or getting comatose drunk. Only the former seemed attractive right now.


End file.
